Biodiversity risk screening for banks and lenders, parcel by parcel
Biodiversity risk screening for banks starts with a location. The EBA's guidelines on the management of ESG risks, published in January 2025 and applying to large institutions from 11 January 2026, expect credit institutions to identify environmental risks beyond climate — ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss among them — and treat the geographical location of counterparties' key assets as relevant data for doing so. ERWAY Legality Assessment gives a bank that data per parcel: every collateral plot, project site or financed farm checked against protected areas, Indigenous and community lands, heritage and wetland designations and threatened-species records, with one outcome per parcel and the record that supports it.
A portfolio is screened the way a single site is, only all at once. Upload the parcels as GeoJSON with the loan or client reference as the identity field, let five checks run per parcel in the background, and read the outcome by source: which parcels overlap a protected area and by how many hectares, which lie on recognised Indigenous land and need documented consent, which sit inside or near a wetland of international importance. The export goes into the credit file with every finding dated. The EU Taxonomy DNSH page follows the same record into taxonomy-aligned lending; the agricultural lending page follows it into farm finance.
What supervisors now expect
The EBA guidelines (EBA/GL/2025/01) ask institutions to identify, measure, manage and monitor ESG risks, with environmental risks explicitly covering ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss, and to consider ESG factors in collateral valuation and in risk limits by client segment and collateral type. The ECB's supervisory expectations on climate-related and environmental risks have pointed the same way since 2020. The practical prerequisite for all of it is knowing where the financed assets are and what they touch.
What the screening produces for the credit file
Per parcel: the overlap with a protected area in hectares and as a share of the parcel, with the category and protection class; the relation to any International heritage designations or protected wetland site, with the footprint's confidence stated; the tenure status where the parcel lies on Indigenous or community land, with the consent flag; a species context kept separate from the outcome. One outcome per parcel on a five-step scale and the strictest tier behind it; a project-level outcome that is the worst parcel, never an average. A project-finance desk reads the same output for a single large site.
'Not checked' is not the same as 'clean'
A parcel whose checks are still queued shows 'Not checked yet', with a clock icon, and a portfolio in which some parcels were never checked shows 'Checks in progress' rather than an outcome. The distinction matters in a credit process, where a blank is easily taken as a pass. Results refresh automatically when a source is re-imported, and the previous result stays visible until the new one is ready.
What remains the bank's
Title, cadastre, zoning and permits come from the national register; the valuation and the credit decision are the bank's. The screening is preliminary, and every finding is labelled accordingly. What it settles is which parcels need a document, a permit or a consent before the facility is drawn — the question a land-acquisition or collateral review would otherwise have to answer parcel by parcel, manually.
Frequently asked questions
Keep reading
- Legality Assessment
- Where it fits
- EU Taxonomy DNSH for biodiversity: answering the site question, site by site
- Agricultural lending: screen every financed farm plot before the loan is drawn
- Project finance environmental screening before the Equator Principles assessment
- Land acquisition due diligence: protected areas, wetlands and land tenure before you sign the option